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Doing more with less buoyed naval commander

In 1775, Canada faced invasion by the army of the rebel forces of nascent America.

John Schank, a Scottish officer, was only a lieutenant when he was given command of the naval presence protecting Canada at Lake Champlain. But he was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and that, and his ability to engineer solutions, stood him in good stead.

His first task was to assemble ships to battle the rebels. In less than six weeks he’d constructed one ship. He proceeded to build a fleet, defeating General Benedict Arnold’s attack. Schank did it by scratching together whatever was available and turning it into a tool or weapon capable of far more than what one would think possible.

It was an approach he continued to rely on. For his success at Lake Champlain, in 1778 Schank was rewarded with a posting in the west, taking charge of a huge area that included the Great Lakes, which formed the western defence of the British northwest.

He was 38 years old and controlled a front larger than Europe. The forces he had at his command were few. He managed to wrangle some professional sailors from the Royal Navy to man key positions on his ships but many positions, including officers and almost all those on land, were filled by non-military people including shipwrights and artificers as well as the less specialized labourers.

One of the many men under Schank was a French-Canadian businessman from Quebec who showed a particular ability on the waves. John Baptiste Bouchette earned his commission in an artillery company after he built and armed a schooner which helped evacuate Montreal when it was attacked by the Americans, and then scooped up British generals, including Guy Carleton, in a small boat, whisking them away to safety. Under Schank, Bouchette took command of the sloop Hope and later the Seneca, patrolling Lake Ontario against American invasion as a master and commander.

Much of Schank’s Great Lakes fleet was made up of re-purposed civilian craft fitted with one or two cannon. It was bolstered by a wide net of spies and scouts composed of First Nations, French-Canadian and British trappers and traders. They patrolled out of Kingston, what would become Toronto, bases in the Niagara Peninsula, what would become Windsor, Detroit and other temporary bases.

Schank’s methods of adapting civilian craft to military use and cobbling fighting forces by assembling untrained forces leavened with seasoned professionals, was so efficient and perfect for the territory, it remained the framework for future challenges Ontario would face, including the War of 1812.

Edinburgh, his hometown, granted Schank freedom of the city, “in testimony of the good services done to his King and Country as Captain and Senior Officer and Commissioner of H.M. Fleet on the lakes and rivers in Canada.”

Even a decade after he returned to Britain, Schank was sought by leaders in Canada — he was requested by name when John Graves Simcoe needed someone to help improve communications, logistics and defence in Upper Canada in 1794.

By the time Schank died in 1823, he’d been promoted to rear admiral of the blue.

— Tom Villemaire is a writer based in Toronto and the Bruce Peninsula. Tom@Historylab.ca